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Tag: brain

2016 A fresh start

Hi everyone I’m back!!

You all know I had family stuff to deal with and my blog was dreadfully neglected 😦 and I apologise for that!

I dislike the whole new year’s resolutions thing so I refuse to do it I don’t really even like setting goals at the beginning of the year so that way at the end of the year I don’t feel so bad when I haven’t actually achieved them… only half as bad.
But I do have a HOPE for this blog the usual growth and popularity ect ect but that will only happen with hard work! And that’s what the HOPE is for my blog that I can put other things to the side and remain focused on my blog and post at least once a month and maybe do a progress report on a project – but that will only be if I remember because its more likely I’ll get to the end of the project and go “oh crap progress report… “

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In my last post explaining that my internet was unreliable and more or less crap and I didn’t have access to my craft stuff I mentioned something about cross stich and also that I was working on the Brighton Blanket. Well this is where the story picks up…

I did finish my cross stitching part of the birth samplers that I made for my 2 friends and washed and ironed them but… that’s as far as I got and I still have to give one to my neighbour who wants to choose the frame for her granddaughter and I haven’t found a frame for my other friend.

I also pulled out one of my really big cross stitches that I started years ago and put to the side when I taught myself to crochet, I’ll post a pic if I remember.

Sao ‘helping’ me cross stitch

Sao ‘helping’ again

Noah’s Submarine (Cross Stitch) the animals on side of sub and birds have been done since this pic was taken.

The Noah’s Submarine pic was taken ages ago and I havent taken a pic sinse I finished the side animals like the zebras, crocodile, hippo, sheep, camels, and ram as well as some of the birds

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Well you also know that I was part of a crochet satellite reef project that is sort of how the entire following story started back in 2014 sometime around June or July…

Ok so picking up from me being a terrible person and woefully neglecting my blog and not being able to make any videos etc., etc., etc.…

I made it back home just in time for one of the festivals that we have here each year called the Fringe Festival. ( I will post some pics). There was 3 weeks between the time I got home and when the fringe festival started.

That is how the Regional Art Gallery Yarn Bombing group came about, I will most likely refer to the Regional art gallery as just the Gallery or Art Gallery and the Yarn bombing croup as CRABS in the future. C is the town I live in Regional Art gallery Bombers, That is our working title and I think it might stick as we live in a coastal city right on the beach.

So I arrived home and found out that the Fringe Festival was in 3 weeks!! And was like WOAH! As I had been trying and FAILING to finish the Brighton blanket (mentioned in a previous blog post) which I still haven’t finished. The place I was staying just drains me creatively and I just don’t feel like doing ANYTHING except eating and watching Tv and even that is too much effort sometimes! I had just lost all creative energy and feeling. But I was excited to get back to the gallery and see all my friends as they didn’t know I was home and I was surprising them and I KNEW they would inspire me, so away I went! It was such a great morning and so inspiring, I came away with SO many ideas!! And a renewed determination or invigoration for crochet – basically I got excited about crochet again.

After I got home from the gallery I was just like wow there’s so much we can do!!

We had a great space to work with some big trees some medium trees, garden beds, benches and a large chess set which I got to decorate! We had lattice work panels the library uses as a security barrier for the enclosed courtyard we also had dark green lamp posts that made for great contrast colours.

Enough of the talk here are the pics !!

Sandies Hearts Dreamcatcher

Lamp post and lattice panel

My spider web about 1.3mtrs across

Spiderweb and Doily panel

Crocheted Dreamcatcher

Me and my ‘friends’

Bush Turkey

Panel that is wrapped around palm tree

Decorated Chess set

Amigurumi hearts

panel on tree (but not yet attached)

Rows of Treble crochet attached to lengths of bamboo and hung from the tree.

So then the fringe festival was over and what had taken us a full day to put up had taken less then a half hour to take down. It was a learning experience! The yarn bombing was up for 10 days and we had so may positive comments it was amazing! Not that you really expect anything less right… I mean crochet, knitting and other fibre crafts are amazing all in themselves but put them on display in the open outside to the weather and people really see it, then they REALLY see it!! And when I say whether I mean it we had sun shine and rain and thunder!

Dots poor bush turkey got so sodden and was all droopy and hanging limply that the library staff were joking about getting a ladder and going over there and “ringing its neck” to get the water out (and the rest of the body) That got a good laugh.

Sandie who made the wonderful hanging hearts from the big tree she is the liaison between the CRABS and the council (as she is an employee) She does Story time at the library with the children. She decided to take them outside and sit under the tree with the hearts and spider web and she told us all that there were 2 little boys whispering about the ‘Big spider web” she told them about the other webs a smaller one just to their left and they were all “No it’s not the big spider web” so I was happy with that 🙂

Unfortunately there were some thefts and a few items were stolen, one of the large panels that was attached to the lattice panel was taken, the pink possum was taken (later found and returned to its spot), a few other smaller items like the 3d amigurumi hearts we started with like 9 and ended with 5. A seat panel that was never recovered either. It was sad but when people would bring their friends back they would say oh there was “this” here and “that” on this chair ect and wrote letters to the paper about how bad the theft was.

After the Fringe Festival was all done with we all sort of lost momentum as our next yarn bombing project was/is going to be the Warwick Jazz and Jumpers festival – http://jumpersandjazz.com/yarn-bombing/ we wont find out the the theme until mid February so we all sort of lost momentum with Yarn Bombing. The Fringe festival was mid September so some of us were working on projects for the next fringe festival others started working on the neurons and we were all discussing ideas for Warwick jazz and jumpers and sectioned themes for our park.

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I just finished writing this up about half hour ago and then remembered this little story. On the day we were putting up all the yarn bombing a lady was walking through the park and it was about 2.30pm and most of the ‘big stuff’ was done it was just smaller bit and pieces and checking things were secured … I overheard the lady talking to Sandie and saying that she had been to Warwick Jazz and jumpers and while it was a fantastic even she really loved our park because you had to sort of look at things to see them. She loved how we had used the side gardens to put things up that were the size of regular pillow cases or smaller and spaced out so next time you walked through you would see something different.

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Another CRABer came across an article about knitted neurons – as in brain neurons! I’ll post the link to the website with the free PDF downloadable pamphlet with the patterns in it. It has crochet and knit patterns as well as wrap patterns for crafters who don’t knit or crochet. We have experimented with alfoil, masking tape, plastic shopping bags and scrap material for the centre of the wrap neurons. We have also used straws and pipe cleaners for the Axons (sticky out bits) Sandie has set up appointments with the local libraries to do free workshops to help get people interested in the Neurons and hopefully boost our yarn bombing numbers.

you will need to scroll down the page to – Interested in hosting a Neural Knitwork? It is number 5 on the list – You’ll need plenty of yarn, needles, copies of ourscientifically-based neuron crafting pattern books (3.4 MB PDF) and a comfy spot in which to create

You can also google images of crochet and knitted neurons and see mostly the same thing but there are a few images in there that are really cool!

A crochet Pyramid neuron and an In progress Stellate neuron. And a sneak peek at another project up the back 🙂

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I’ve also worked on a few little things but I don’t want to into them in this post as I’ve already gone on long enough so you are very likely to get another post in the next week or two. 🙂

On a totally unrelated side note I’m sitting out in the lounge trying to write and watch Ghostbusters with hubby at the same time… meaning my craft/sewing room was confiscated and I was moved to the lounge and I’m getting distracted LOL.

I hope you all had a safe and happy holiday season and I hope it was as stress free as possible, I also hope the back to school shopping goes just as stress free (pfft, yeah right I hear you say)